


You've Never Seen the Ocean

by tealmoon



Series: Yesterday's Dreams [5]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Underfell, Alternate Universe - Underswap, Drinking, Friendship, Gen, Heat Stroke, Misunderstandings, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-06-09 22:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6925276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tealmoon/pseuds/tealmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He still isn't used to seeing people that he should know and finding out that they're completely different.</p>
<p>But in some cases, it's an improvement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It turned out that Hotland in a different dimension was just as shitty as Hotland back home. It stank of the same sulfur, and it was just as hot. He was sweating through his shorts and borrowed shirt, even after tying his jacket around his waist. Other-Papyrus was unfazed when Sans had left him, but maybe the bastard had icepacks taped to his ribs. Anything could be hiding under that orange hoodie.

Hotland was a necessary evil. Sans was steadily trying to create a mental map of this Underground, which seemed to be the same overall, just shifted over a few degrees in certain places. His teleportation span was getting wider, but he wasn’t sure how to progress. Papyrus was content to let him wander around rather than sticking to the sentry station, but he couldn’t predict the boundaries of this place, where he could go and what was potentially unsafe. For all that they crowed about their perfect, friendly Underground, Sans didn’t want to stumble into someone’s territory by accident.

Leaving Papyrus to his weird devices (he was selling _something_ , but Sans had no idea what), he walked through Hotland. The puzzles, elevators, and conveyer belts weren’t that different, just better maintained and less dangerous. The air vents weren’t poisoned or scalding, though he watched a Vulkin go through before he felt okay traversing them himself, and the conveyers moved at a sedate pace, rather than attempting to throw off its passengers. Sans wandered through it all, intending to head up to the Core. At the very least, it would be cooler, and he wanted to see if the scientists here had done anything novel to its construction.

A quieter part of him wondered what their Core might feel like, thinking of the one back home, which screamed and sang to Sans in a familiar voice. _jump in jump in, you deserve it, all of you do, your fault your fault your fault_

He never liked going to the Core, back home.

The temperature change was immediate, but he could only enjoy it for a few seconds. Back home, between the Core and Hotland was strictly Mettaton’s domain, and it was better to teleport past it altogether, rather than risk being a participant in whatever sadistic new show was on. The building in front of him throbbed with sound—not screams, but music. Some sort of nightclub, he figured, looking up at the flashing sign. Who went to a club at midday?

The heat had left him with a stinging headache, so the noise felt like it was digging into the cracks in his skull, even from a distance. Sans paced around the perimeter, hoping there was a way around rather than through, but he ran into dead-ends and a pair of monsters rummaging through a dumpster. (The sight made him uneasy, but he tried to shake it off. There was no need to think about it, no point in remembering a pair of babybones digging through the trash for a scrap of food or clothing…) There was a side entrance, and he stumbled in, hoping it would lead to an exit. He scanned the room, taking a few steps in, but there wasn’t another door. The bunny at the counter looked up from his phone with an exhausted expression. “You gonna buy something?” His voice was raised over the din pounding through the adjacent wall.

Warily, Sans stepped over to the freezer lining the far wall, snatching up the cheapest thing inside, a lumpy blob of…something, in a white wrapper. At the very least, it was cold, which was all Sans could really care about after walking around Hotland. He stood in the open door for a minute, wishing he could crawl into the freezer itself, until the monster behind him started coughing pointedly. If he shoved everything out, there’d be enough room for him to fit, and it’d be a nice place for a nap. He was out of practice at handling Hotland—it usually took longer for him to start fantasizing about snow piles and ice.

Before his gold had hit the counter, he tore the wrapper off and shoved the ice cream between his teeth. No point in waiting—it’d just melt if he took it back to Hotland.

It tasted like freezer burn, to be generous; if there was supposed to be any particular flavor, he couldn’t identify it. He turned away before the cashier could see his grimace, trying to swallow it as fast as possible. Sans hated wasting food and had eaten some awful things in his day, but he had been spoiled on a week’s worth of quality (if dubious) spider-made pastries, and his counterpart’s worst cooking efforts weren’t as bad as this. There was still some ice cream left on the stick when he pitched it into the trash, but the cashier didn’t notice as Sans turned back around.

“What’s the deal with the noise?” Sans asked, waving a hand toward the doorway. He couldn’t imagine having to stand so close for hours; no wonder this guy looked pissed off.

“My boss is recording something new, apparently. Usually it’s not this loud during the day when nobody’s at the club, but he’s been _inspired_. So inspired that he’s forgotten about payday or the shift schedule.” He kept talking, rolling his eyes and gesturing, but Sans had already turned away.

He couldn’t press on through the noise, so he admitted defeat and headed back, with nothing but a cloying taste in his mouth to show for it. At least he had investigated most of Hotland, so he would be able to teleport freely around it, but he still needed to get to the Core, and the failure irritated him.

Sans came to a stop on the stairs back into Hotland. What he had thought was just air shimmers from the heat was actually tiny flame elementals floating along the path in front of him, following behind a leader. His Soul constricted in his ribcage, like someone had reached in and _squeezed._

It couldn’t be Grillby. He knew Grillby down to his chemical composition, knew the exact color and temperature of his flames, and this wasn’t him: vivid pink instead of murky purple, much colder than he should have been. He was carrying a crate and striding away, too far to notice Sans, laughing at whatever the sphere of flame beside his shoulder whispered to him. It was possible that he was some random elemental that Sans had never met, but he followed anyway, helpless to stop, as if his feet didn’t belong to him anymore.

He hadn’t thought there was a Grillby in this bizarre dimension. Sans had assumed that he was dead, overthrown by that alternate Muffet, his bar claimed and changed into that café. She hadn’t seemed too vicious, but who could tell?

If he had been back home, he would have never followed that path—he was used to it leading to too many spiders. But it didn’t smell like cobwebs, just heat and charcoal: safe, familiar smells, not overwhelmed with sulfur. At the very least, it felt a little cooler away from the lava; he had already started sweating and getting dizzy again, just from that short walk.

It didn’t feel like Grillby’s as he stumbled into the elemental’s territory, still expecting a brush of webs against his ankles, taking careful steps in case he was about to be trapped. It was too empty, except for a lone bastard sprawled on the bar, playing with an empty shot glass. There was no smell of grease (no chance of getting a burger or fries, he realized in disappointment), no shattered jukebox in the corner, no crowd. The false Grillby was unloading the crate, restocking the shelves behind the bar, but he turned around as Sans climbed up onto a bar stool. His face split in a jagged grin, brighter pink and orange swirling inside his ‘mouth’.

“Care for a drink?” he asked in a whisper, his voice less gravely than it should have been. “300g, to help liberate the elementals in the Ruins. You’re a new customer, so you get a discount.”

Why the hell not? He had more than enough to pay, and he had expected a much higher price than that. The other skeletons had yet to demand any rent, and they fed and clothed him without asking him to pitch in, so he still had the bulk of his savings from home. He nodded hesitantly and fished out the gold from his pocket, making sure not to jangle it and give away how much he really had. “Surprise me, I’m not picky.”

All of his movements were sweeping and excessive as he snatched a bottle from the highest shelf, pouring it in an elegant arch and lighting the drink aflame with a pass of his fingers. Sans tried not to wince: anything that could burn was likely to get him sloshed in no time, and he was already a lightweight due to his size. It wouldn’t take much to get him drunk, and both of them knew it.

Pink-Grillby wandered over to the other side of the bar, trying to grind out a last bit of gold from the poor bastard even as he waved his empty wallet at the bartender. A few tiny flames edged closer to Sans, probably trying to pickpocket him for a few extra coins, and he shooed them away.

Sans watched the flames on his drink burn themselves out, mostly to keep from staring. Why would an elemental be _pink_ , especially such an advanced one? Colder colors weren’t so strange for little flames, but the bigger ones took effort to create. Who would waste their time on a big elemental but not make them strong? How could this guy defend himself, let alone his bar and the other flames, if he was so cold? This Grillby probably wasn’t hot enough to singe Sans, not like his counterpart. It wouldn’t hurt at all to touch him, even without a layer of clothing…

His drink hadn’t quite cooled enough, but he start taking sips to distract himself from that train of thought. It felt good to feel the glass burning his fingers, the hot drink stinging against his teeth. He could already feel it starting to get to him, or was it just this Grillby’s presence? Did he miss the real Grillby so badly that a doppelganger could make him all hot and bothered? Hopefully the bar was dim enough to hide how red-faced he must have been. This place was a lackluster substitute for the bar back home, but if he didn’t look, just kept drinking and listening to the bartender crackling and burning, it was almost good enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) The layout for Hotland is absolutely ridiculous and I had to look up a reference, which was super convoluted.
> 
> 2) I have no idea why I initially thought Swap Grillby was blue. There must have been some fanart of it, to get that stuck in my head, but I could not find it when I looked for a reference. Mostly I don't get why he's so silly looking, it doesn't seem very Muffet-ish. I just don't feel like making him quite that goofy.


	2. Chapter 2

He really did look just like Grillby, Sans decided, staring at him past the rim of his glass. Although he was wearing a weird, pansy-ass waistcoat that the real Grillby wouldn’t be caught dead in, Sans could kind of see the lines of him underneath it: same forearms, same fingers underneath those gloves. Most humanoid monsters looked the same to him, but he had spent years memorizing Grillby from a spot just like this. Physically, he _was_ Grillby, aside from his color and temperature.

No one came through the door aside from another crowd of lesser elementals, and the broke guy soon wandered away, until it was just Sans and a lot of fire. No one else was drinking at that time of day. Why bother staying open, when it wasn’t going to turn a decent profit?

He wasn’t going to make much money off Sans alone, that was obvious. He was only on his second drink, and with each sip it felt like his bones were getting lighter, like he was going to evaporate or float away. Had Grillby put something in his drink? He had watched each one being poured, but maybe his glass had been tampered with, or he had missed it altogether.

His phone kept vibrating against his hip, and he didn’t bother answering or checking who it was, shoving his hand in his pocket and poking at the screen until it stopped.

The silence was starting to get to him. There was supposed to be someone gossiping or heckling someone else, drunken singing or swearing or the start of a bar fight. There weren’t any cooking sounds from the back room, and that was wrong too. Even on the worst days, there was always a plate of fries or a burger. Breakfast had been hours ago, and he didn’t have any food to keep him from getting wasted too quickly, aside from a piece of squished monster candy Blue had given him, which had barely lasted through the first drink.

Pink-Grillby hadn’t said anything aside from offering more drinks, and he wasn’t paying any attention to Sans. It was going to be one of _those_ days, wasn’t it?

But maybe Sans had to make the first move. Back home, Grillby usually initiated things; of course he did, being the stronger and older monster. But sometimes he made Sans work for his attention, and that had to be it, here, for him to ignore Sans this much. If he didn’t want to talk, at least he would touch Sans, right?

He adjusted his shirt, just a little bit, shifting the collar so a section of his clavicle was exposed, gleaming white in the dim room. That had always been a turn-on for Grillby: the idea of blackening Sans’s bones so that everyone would know who had marked him, unless he kept covered. And even then, if he did wear pants or kept his sleeves pulled down, people could guess why.

He took another gulp of his drink, wondering if he needed a third. Could he handle it? Would Grillby make him take another? He was already too drunk to teleport if something went wrong, so what difference was there between two drinks and three?

(He was cuter when he was drunk, lots of people said it—he smiled more sincerely, he tripped over everything, he didn’t argue or fight back. No wonder Grillby seemed to like him better that way, and it was probably true with this one.)

Sans drained the glass and set it down with a clank that drew the bartender’s gaze. His expression gave away little, but that was hardly new. “Gimme another, Grillz.” A third and he would have enough courage to act, or Grillby would make the decision for him. He needed more.

Grillby looked down at the glass, turning it around in his long fingers. “How about a different kind,” he finally said. “A lower price. Just 200 g.”

Sans nodded, so rapidly that his vertebrae ached, but his excitement withered into confusion. He squinted at the bottle Grillby retrieved from the mini fridge under the bar. “What…what is that?”

“Just fruit juice,” Grillby said calmly, pouring sparkling water into it. “You can buy another drink, but not an alcoholic one. You’ve had enough liquor.”

He slid it in reach of Sans’s shaking hands. He wanted to throw it to the floor, or into Grillby’s face, just to see him hurt; a weak flame could be disfigured for weeks from a glass of liquid. What was Grillby _doing_? Why didn’t he want Sans drunk?

Sans shoved it back towards him, slopping a little of the pink mixture onto the bar. “I’ll pay for the real stuff, just gimme a third. Unless…”

He rose up to his knees on the barstool, wobbling a little as he reached towards the shelves, blue magic sparking from his hands to the bottles, hoping to snag one. Did he need to beg? Was it a test? His attempts at telekinesis failed to do anything but make the bottles shiver against each other, but he tried to pour more magic into it.

Grillby’s hand came down around the wrist he was using to hold himself up, and Sans nearly fell over, his magic going out completely. Through the gloves, he could feel how cold he was: not a bonfire, not the real Grillby at all, just a candle that didn’t say the right words or follow the stage directions. There wasn’t any lust or interest on his face, just annoyance.

“I think you need to leave,” Grillby said, and the other elementals, which had been watching the exchange, started to move in closer, threatening to burn him if he didn’t obey.

Sans wrenched himself away, and the momentum of it sent him falling off the barstool. He landed hard on the floor, his ankle taking the brunt of his weight. He used the bar to pull himself up and began to hobble towards the door, trying not to put too much pressure on his ankle. Sans barely registered his phone buzzing again, only focused on getting out.

As he stumbled into Hotland once more, the oppressive heat and humidity rushed back at him. Sans swooned, falling forward and catching himself with his palms, only to hiss at how much the stone walkway burned. Somehow, it felt much hotter than before, and he began to sweat anew, his shirt and shorts soaked and clinging to his bones within moments.

He just wanted to go back to the riverperson and Snowdin—he couldn’t stay here anymore. Sans chose a random direction to walk, and it seemed like the right way to go. He could see the elevator in the distance, but the airvent maze in between became an impassible obstacle. Usually the mazes barely counted as puzzles, but now he kept choosing the wrong paths, over and over, going in circles. His headache had returned in full force, and the ice cream and drinks in his nonexistent stomach were threatening to reappear as he sailed through the air.

He just needed to get to the elevator, but every step was getting harder and more wobbly, even as he made it to solid ground and only had to walk in a straight line. The elevator was disgorging passengers as he stumbled forward, a group of Pyropes that held the door and watched his shaky steps with disdain. “Are you alright?” one asked, but he moved past and into the elevator without answering, slapping at the buttons until the door shut on their staring.

Sans slid down to the floor, clutching at it in an attempt to stabilize himself against the elevator’s movement. It was moving too quickly, and he was going to be sick, going to throw up in the elevator and get in so much trouble, could he pay to clean it, would they take payment instead of punishing him—

The door opened and he crawled out, too dizzy to stand though his knees were burning. He managed to reach the side of the path before he started dry heaving over the lava.

Nothing came up, though he wanted to vomit just to make the nausea go away, coughing and gagging. The fumes and heat rising from the lava only made it worse, but he didn’t want to move, couldn’t move.

Sans lost track of time staring into the gentle flow of the lava below him, his body wracked with coughs. His head hurt so much that he almost didn’t hear the voice.

“Excuse me? Um, h-hi, uh…” It felt like it took years for him to look up, and he couldn’t process it when he did. He saw blue scales and red hair, and his mind spit back errors. Where were the scars and the armor? Where was the missing eye, the spears? But, if there could be a Grillby that wouldn’t give him the time of day, maybe there could be a frail, stuttering Undyne. Sans began to giggle at the absurdity of it, and she looked more alarmed.

As if in response to his thoughts, she held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Undyne.” She squatted next to him, trying to touch the ground as little as possible. She was sweating too, and her gills were strained open. What was a fish doing in Hotland?

“So, um, I noticed you’ve been sitting out here for a while, and you look pretty sick? Not that I’ve been watching you or anything, I just noticed, and I wanted to make sure you were okay. I think you should come inside and get some water…”

Her words tangled up in each other, sentences piling up as high as Mt. Ebott. He gaped at her, and she winced, taking a water bottle from her inventory. It was already half-evaporated and hot, but she held it out to him. Sans took a swig and immediately began to gag once more, spitting it up onto the walkway where it steamed.

“I think you really need to come inside,” Undyne said, and she lifted him up easily, half-carrying Sans down the path. It was a meandering pace, as she was sweating and panting under the heat as well, but it was a lot faster than Sans could have gotten crawling on his own. He tried to pull away from her as they passed the fork leading down to the boat, but he barely had any strength to stand on his own, let alone escaping her grasp.

“N-no, no, _this_ way, it’s just over here…” He managed to look up and began to laugh again, strained and high with terror, helpless to do anything else as she dragged him into the Hotland Royal Laboratory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait, I kept changing my mind on how I wanted this to go, and I still feel a little frustrated with how it came out. I changed the tags to better reflect that, and now this is another sickfic, because I guess I really like writing fell Sans being ill and being taken care of.
> 
> One thing I did learn while writing this, though: being drunk actually does increase your risk of getting heat exhaustion or heat stroke. And it IS summer right now, so consider this a PSA and keep that in mind if you do any summer partying, dear readers.


	3. Chapter 3

The doors slid open and she dragged Sans inside the lab, the laughter dying in his throat. The temperature difference was so sudden that the sweat dripping from his bones went icy, and he began to shiver, audibly rattling.

She managed a few steps in the moment that he froze, blindly staring around. His immediate reaction was to reach for a shortcut, but he was too weak to use any magic, maybe not even capable of summoning bones. He began to thrash, surprising her enough that she dropped him. Distantly, he knew that he had fallen on his bad ankle, from the way he collapsed to the floor, but that pain was neatly hidden behind the heat and the needles stabbing inside his skull.

Undyne slapped at the door locks before he could crawl more than a few inches to the threshold, looking panicked. “You’re too sick, you can’t go back out! Oh god, was that a seizure? Can you talk to me?”

Though she obviously didn’t have the strength he’d expect from an Undyne, it didn’t seem to strain her to reach down and pick him up, arms around his ribcage, and carry him over an alcove in the wall. He tried to elbow her in the stomach, legs flailing, but he clearly wasn’t having any impact. She shifted him a bit to hold him with one arm, and for a delirious second, he thought she was groping him as her other hand went lower. Undyne reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Sorry, I should have asked first, but we don’t have time...”

She set his phone on a table several feet away, moved them closer to the wall, and pulled the cord above them.

Sans shrieked, a garbled mess of wingdings tearing out of his mouth at the cold spray of water that hit him. Not acid or some weird machine, just an emergency shower. He had seen them hundreds of times, back when he used to work in labs, but had never been in one. Undyne set him down, propping him up against the wall so he wouldn’t fall. “Are you okay? Maybe I should have warned you, but we need to get you cooled down as fast as possible. C-can you tell me your name?”

“I’m fine,” he rasped, hoping it would get her to back off a little. “Name’s Red, Red the skeleton.” He had gotten used to the other skeletons introducing him to people, and it felt bizarre to use Red for himself, like it was a word in a language he had barely started to learn.

“Oh thank god,” Undyne breathed. “Is this helping any? It’s not cold water, but it’s a start.” It felt like diving into Snowdin River, but she was reacting as if it was a warm bath, pulling the pins out of her hair and letting it fall to her shoulders with an awkward plop.

“The water’s clean, if you’re worried about that,” Undyne said. “I use it all the time whenever I’m overheated, so it’s not rusty or full of bacteria.” There wasn’t much room for both of them to stand under the spray, and he wondered, hysterically, if this was supposed to be the beginning of a really terrible porn: ‘skeletal twink and lady scientist have steamy wet fun’. Thankfully, she stepped out of the water after a few minutes and peeled off her lab coat to leave it on the floor. She already looked much better than he felt— it had brought back the color in her scales, and she wasn’t flushed anymore.

“It’ll run for a while longer, so you can stay in it until you’re cooled off. It shuts off by itself, so don’t worry about that.” She didn’t seem to care that she was leaving puddles as she walked, but there wasn’t much to ruin. There weren’t any experiments that he could see, no machinery or tools. It barely looked like a lab at all, covered in posters and, to be honest, kind of trashed. He didn’t have much of a vantage point from the alcove, but the parts he could see were scattered with dirty dishes and papers.

Now that she was gone, there was enough room for him to sit down on the wet floor, a few inches from the central drain. Although he knew his magic reserves were still working, the minimum level that kept his bones together, he still patted at his eye sockets to make sure they were still sealed off and no water was getting inside his skull, to where his brother’s dust was settled.

As he watched her, Undyne wandered around, retrieving towels and setting up a little desk fan on the floor. “When you’re done over there, you can come sit down here and cool off a little more, okay?”

The water wasn’t actually as cold as it initially felt— scientists could be pretty sadistic, but there was no point in an emergency shower that gave you hypothermia while it washed off chemicals. Around the five minute mark, he had stopped shivering, and at minute ten, both the water and his bones felt almost lukewarm. His head wasn’t spinning as much.

The shower finally trickled to a stop after fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, it was hard to tell. She came back over, helping him stand and leading him over the towel pile, where the fan was whirring away. He was still a little dizzy and didn’t fight back as she draped a wet towel around his vertebrae.

She started to rummage through the mini-fridge beside her overflowing desk, muttering to herself and shoving around brightly-wrapped packages before emerging with two bottles of water. Undyne rolled one over to him, and Sans had become coherent enough to see that it was still sealed. He could have checked it for needle marks in the bottle cap, or any number of other, less obvious tampering methods, but he needed the water, drugged or not. She was opening the other bottle for herself, so it was probably safe.

He drained nearly half of it in one gulp, ignoring her stuttering suggestion to slow down. He could tell he’d be hungover the next day, as well as sick, and he badly needed it.

Chewing on her lip (even her fangs looked less intimidating than the Undyne he knew), she headed back to the fridge and dug a container out of the freezer. She laid it and a spoon at his feet, hands immediately twisting together once they were empty. “Um, here, have some ice cream too. It should restore any HP you lost. I make it myself, b-but it’s really good! I promise!”

Undyne hadn’t checked him, he realized. Back home, it would have been perfectly acceptable for her to do it, as both a higher class and the stronger monster. There wasn’t much he could do to stop her, if she wanted to stare at his stats, but she hadn’t looked.

He peeled off the lid, uncertainly— he’d had his fill of awful ice cream for the day, and now that he was sitting in the Royal Lab, he couldn’t stop thinking about poison and drugs. But the nausea had receded, and if it’d help cool him down more...

Sans spooned up a tiny sliver of it, barely any at all, and let it sit in his mouth as he slid the container over to her. If they shared, he’d know it was safe. From the color, he had expected strawberry or bubblegum, but it tasted like mint instead.

She looked up from her phone, where she had been texting with narrow-eyed concentration. “Oh, uh, do you not like it? Sorry, I can get you something else—”

“Nah,” he said, his voice still coming out cracked and painful. He took another gulp of water before continuing. “It’d be shitty to take your food and not let you have any.”

“Oh!” She laughed awkwardly and hurried back to get another spoon before she sat down again, closer, with the ice cream between them. “Sorry, I’m a bad host, making you feel uncomfortable. I don’t have any clean bowls...” It didn’t stop her from digging out a sizable spoonful for herself, and she didn’t collapse or seize or start vomiting. It was okay to have more.

“So Red,” she said, fake-bright. “What brings you to Hotland?”

Well, shit. Their cover story wasn’t going to work with her: what Hotlander got heatstroke? He was clearly out of place just from the heavy jacket tied around his waist, and she clearly had Alphys’s security, judging from the main monitor by the door. She probably knew all the locals by sight.

Better to skip over that part. “I was with my cousin, he’s got a sentry station nearby. Got bored though, and walked around for too long, made myself sick.” Had she seen him coming out of that false Grillby’s bar? How long had she been watching?

“Your cousin. You mean Papyrus? I was going to ask if you knew him, but that felt...racist? To assume all skeletons know each other?” Her fins darkened with embarrassment, and she shoved another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth, no doubt just to shut herself up.

He didn’t mind, not really. It wasn’t like his social skills were much better. What was he supposed to say to the Royal Scientist herself, even if she wasn’t the psycho he had expected? Though the heat in his bones was steadily receding, his head still throbbed and spun. He was glad they were sitting on the floor: less distance if he fell over.

“Yeah, I—” How to word things so she wouldn’t ask questions? “I’m staying with them in Snowdin, and I’ve been going with Papyrus on his sentry shifts. Guess I’m too used to the snow.”

She giggled, hand immediately shooting out to cover her mouth. “Hotland’s the _worst_ , isn’t it? I hate it here too, it—”

His phone buzzed against the table where she had left it, and she shot up to grab it for him. “Sorry, I forgot to give it back, um. Shouldn’t you answer that?” Carefully drying his hands, he took it from her and winced when he saw the screen.

Papyrus was calling. Hell, all the other calls that Sans had ignored had been him as well. (He was marked in his contact list as Lazy Bastard, because his brother was listed under Papyrus, and there was no way Sans would change that.) It seemed obvious now— no one else in this dimension had his number, aside from Blue. He had been gone for a few hours, so Papyrus’s shift must have ended, with Sans nowhere to be found.

As he debated on whether to answer, Papyrus seemed to give up. He hadn’t left any voicemail or texts, but Sans’s phone was so old that it often ignored the latter. The decent thing to do would be to immediately call back, but his head still hurt and he didn’t want to confront his massive fuck-up. Would Papyrus yell at him? Did Blue know too? Would they be pissed off at him, for making Papyrus worry? Had he just lost their generosity with this stunt?

Undyne leaned over, peering at his phone, at the crack in the corner that he was running his finger along. “You hate phone calls too, huh?” There was a weird note in her voice that he couldn’t identify, and he didn’t answer. She nudged the ice cream a little closer to him, but the inside of his mouth had gone sour, and having more could have tipped him over the edge into actually being sick.

The far door swished open, and Undyne yelped, scooting back on the floor and towards Sans. “P-Papyrus!” She stumbled to her feet, making gestures that looked like she was going to straighten her labcoat before remembering that it was still drying on the floor. He ambled in as if he was on a stroll, rather than walking into the Royal Lab itself.

“Hey, Undyne. Was going to ask to borrow your security, but I guess I don’t need to.” He nodded down at Sans, who stared somewhere in the vicinity of his kneecaps, freezing as if Papyrus hadn’t already spotted him. It was hard, reading emotions on a skeleton, but he tipped up his gaze and tried anyway. Papyrus’s teeth weren’t clenched, his jaw loose, no magic flickering in his eyes: good signs. But it was hard to tell the set of his shoulders under that hoodie, and his hands were hidden in his pockets. Were they clenched? A half-smoked cigarette dangled from his mouth, and Sans didn’t know how to interpret that. His brother only smoked when he was upset, and the smell alone activated protective instincts: fix the problem, make Papyrus happy. Even if it was the wrong Papyrus.

What was he supposed to conclude from all of those mixed signals? The ambiguity set him on edge, and he flinched as Papyrus came closer, crouching to look closer at him. Thankfully Undyne carried the slack for him.

“Y-yeah, the heat was making him sick, and I saw him on one of my cameras, so I brought him back here to cool down. Sorry if I made you run around Hotland looking...”

That apology should have been Sans’s, but he had other concerns. Inching over to the nearest table (and away from Papyrus), he grabbed onto the edge and tried to stand. Whatever happened next, he wanted to be on his feet for it. The throbbing in his ankle sharpened to stabbing, and he tried to keep his weight off it, clinging to the table. He swayed with vertigo but managed to stay relatively upright, though he wanted to spend the next hour on the floor. It seemed so inviting now that he had left it. He must have looked pathetic, with his shirt clinging to his ribs and his shoes squelching every time he moved.

“No problem.Thanks for looking out for him.” His voice was too neutral to tell if he was annoyed or pleased at finding Sans, and he was quietly, horribly pleased that Papyrus’s attention was falling on Undyne instead. She looked just as nervous as he felt, shoulders hunched up to her fins.

“I mean, maybe Red should still go to a healer, just to make sure? I tried to help as much as I could, but he might still be heat sick...”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of Red, ‘kay?” That felt ominous, but he forced himself to move when Papyrus gestured him over. Papyrus wouldn’t hurt him too badly, not when Blue was horrified by the idea of him being injured, judging by his reaction to seeing Sans's scars. Papyrus wouldn’t make his brother upset by roughing Sans up, right?

Papyrus led him out of the Lab, hand on his shoulder, matching Sans’s slow pace. He glanced back in the moment before the doors slid shut, and Undyne waved awkwardly. As they stepped back into the blazing air, he could feel his clothes immediately start drying, and he stopped as the heat slammed into him. Papyrus didn’t pause before reaching down and carrying him down the slope to the Riverperson.

“You tall-ass people need to stop picking me up all the time, for fuck’s sake,” he mumbled against Papyrus’s shoulder, and the taller skeleton laughed as he stepped into the boat and set Sans down across from him.

“It was only for a minute, calm down. I doubt you’re gonna want to walk through the snow either, your clothes are still wet. And you were limping.”

He wanted to say he had been through worse, wanted to be tough and walk the rest of the way by himself, but he felt like shit, honestly. He had been through too many temperature changes for one day, he was still a little drunk, and his ankle now hurt regardless of whether he was standing on it or not. Papyrus plucked him back up as the boat came to a stop at the edge of Snowdin, and if he closed his eyes, it almost felt like it was his brother, carrying him home from a late night at Grillby’s. His arms were too soft and his stride was slower, but it was almost the same.

But there would never be another night flirting with Grillby, no more burns, no dozing off in his brother’s grasp.

Papyrus’s steps sped up as he headed through the snow, but the icy air was already starting to seep into his damp clothes. At this rate, he was going to be constantly sick, one thing after another in this place.

Blue was immediately on them, the second Papyrus opened the door. “Are you alright? Where were you? We were so worried, Red!” So Papyrus had told him. He immediately flung himself onto Sans, the second Papyrus set him down on the couch, but he cut short the hug a second later. “Your clothes are all wet... I thought you were in Hotland, not Waterfall.”

“Long story, bro. Maybe get him some dry clothes before we explain?” Blue gave his brother a suspicious glare but hurried up the stairs anyway. Papyrus briefly teleported away and returned with a towel and a glass of water, and Sans started trying to untie his wet shoes with shaking fingers. Papyrus dropped the towel on his skull as Blue came bounding back down, a pile of fresh clothes in his arms.

He toweled himself off and squirmed out of his wet clothing and into a pair of Blue’s sweatpants and t-shirt, the other skeletons awkwardly obliging when he asked them to turn away while he dressed. Grimacing, Blue carried his clothes off to the laundry, but that only gave Sans a minute of respite before his counterpart was back, looking expectant. There was only so much time he could waste on awkward silence and drinking water before he had to explain himself.

“I was just wandering around Hotland, ‘cause I wanted to see how it was different than home. I don’t know why the heat fucked me up so bad, since I used to be a sentry there back home and could handle that fine. Maybe it was because I was sick a while ago?” Low HP and sickness often went hand in hand— his brother had been properly ill just a few times in his life, while Sans frequently had a cough, or days-long headaches, or fatigue that didn’t budge regardless of how many naps he took. Back home, it was just something to hide and power through.

“I knew you shouldn’t have gone on that shift with Pap,” Blue muttered, sitting down next to him and putting an arm around him. It felt like they touched him all the time; his body was forgetting to flinch. “Maybe stick to Waterfall for a few more weeks? Or stay in Snowdin and patrol with me.”

“Undyne saw me puking on one of her cameras, so she helped me get inside. My clothes were wet because I used her shower to cool off. Papyrus showed up looking for me, and that’s pretty much it.”

Blue hummed a bit, reaching down to take Sans’s hand and interlacing their fingers. “And the alcohol?” Sans sputtered, nearly choking on the ice cubes he was letting melt in his mouth. He stared at Blue, who giggled and squeezed his hand. “I can smell it on you, did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

Papyrus shrugged. “I wasn’t going to bring it up, but...” No doubt he had smelled it while carrying Sans. Did he reek and just hadn’t noticed? He turned his head to sniff at his shoulder but it only smelled like clean laundry.

“I...” Were they going to get pissed off, once the story went from ‘wandered away, became sick’ to ‘wandered away, got wasted, became sick because of his own mistakes’? “I knew this guy back home, Grillby. We were friends, I guess, so when I saw the Grillby here, I went with him, just to see if they were anything alike. By the time I realized they weren’t, I’d already had a few drinks.”

“Yeah, usually only Hotland monsters drink at his place, the heat makes you more sick if you’re plastered,” Papyrus said. “Plus he’ll rip you off.”

“If you have to get drunk,” Blue said, with a tone that said he certainly didn’t approve of such behavior, “go to Muffet’s with Papyrus, she has a liquor license. And it’s not as far to get home afterward.”

Could he really replace Grillby so quickly? Could he think of this Snowdin as home, rather than an extended vacation? He could feel the pinpricks of tears forming and pushed his face into the couch, not wanting to lose his shit in front of them. Did Grillby miss him, back in that other Underground?

“Maybe you should rest for a bit. I’ll wake you up in a few hours for dinner.” Blue’s hand rested on his shoulder for a second before he got up, letting Sans settle down across the couch. Papyrus dropped a quilt over him, and he forced himself to sleep, hoping not to dream of flames.

*

“Hey,” Papyrus said, as Blue handed him a bowl. The nap had left him feeling more tired than before, thirsty and aching all over. He wasn’t sure how much food he could handle, but at least it was soup and not something spicy and vomit-inducing. “Undyne texted me, asking for your number. Want me to tell her? She probably wants to check up on you.”

“You could at least use it to tell her thank you,” Blue said.

He already felt like he was minutes from falling asleep again, and their words barely registered. “Yeah, go ahead.”

(Sans would regret it, a little, later on when he was fully hungover and trying to reply to her. He had never seen half of those emoticons before, what the hell was Undernet, and why did she want him to join it?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for how long this took, especially since things are probably going to become even slower due to life shenanigans. I just wanted to get this done already, even if it's not the best it could be. 
> 
> A lot of the delay was due to being unsure of how I wanted to write underswap Undyne and not wanting to mess up with her, since she's going to be a recurring & important character. Let me know your swapdyne thoughts now, before I accidentally write her terribly.


End file.
